Don’t call him late to dinner: Robert De Niro, actor and founding partner of restaurant and hotel chain Nobu has now officially banned U.S. President Donald Trump from all – that’s right – every single one of his 39 Nobu restaurants and hotels around the world. As Esquire points out: that means “Trump is allowed in exactly zero of them.” See also this quote from De Niro: “I don’t care what he likes. If he walked into a restaurant I was in, I’d walk out.” Well you can’t please everybody. —Chloe Riley
Purpose hotels: Katherine Lo, president of Eaton Workshop in Hong Kong represents change; how a subset of the industry is producing a product that speaks to the soul of society looking to connect and stand for something good in an increasingly chaotic and impersonal world. The documentary filmmaker turned social activist and screenwriter has hospitality in her blood and is trying to build what she calls a “global tribe.” She wants her hotels (the second anti-Trump hotel coming to D.C.) to be platforms for bringing together people, organizations, non-profits, startups who share that ethos. It’s powerful and attractive. —Jeff Weinstein
“You don’t have to fill retail with retail anymore.” That’s the bottom line for struggling U.S. mall owners, who are seeing the potential for hotels and residences to take the place of gaps left by the departure of big-box stores like Sears and Toys R Us. It’s also behind the partnership of Simon Property Group and Marriott International to add five hotels to Simon’s shopping centers. And look for the word “experiential” – it’s everywhere! – to pop up in CNBC’s take on the mall movement at a global real estate convention held recently in Las Vegas. —Barbara Bohn
Recipe copyright: Coming up with “Instagrammable” worthy cuisine is all the rage these days and hotel chefs are not immune. But what if you could find a way to come up with a dish so spectacular it needed a copyright? According to experimental chef Nathan Myhrvold, if music and poetry can be copyrighted and monetized, he’s all for doing the same with singular recipes. Should the hotel industry jump aboard? —C.R.
The next Ian Schrager? That’s what the Robb Report suggests, anyway, in an interview with British boutique wunderkind Justin Salisbury and his Artist Residence, which started out as a family guesthouse in Brighton that was overrun and decorated by hundreds of artists. The initial chaos wound up paying off. Favorite quote: “We’ve never really been ready for anything, if I’m being realistic.” —B.B.